Popular content repositories, review and voting sites, and other social collaborative networks generally contain a vast amount of content. Such sites typically encourage users to rate the content (including photographs, news stories and journal entries, videos, products and other items, and services, etc.) to aid other users in locating interesting or otherwise desirable content and avoiding content that may not be of interest.
Unfortunately, unscrupulous individuals may attempt to leverage the popularity of such sites for financial gain such as by directing traffic to advertising and other self promotional material (e.g. spamming). They may also attempt to unfairly wage “smear campaigns” against legitimate content, such as competitors' products. One way of engaging in either of these behaviors is to band together with other users (whether they are other individuals or additional, fictitious users under the control of a single user) to rate content in a concerted manner for mutual benefit.